One Hundred Pieces
by CaptainKase
Summary: One hundred drabbles, one hundred words, one hundred days, and one hundred pieces of the Elric brothers' lives. Drabble Fifty-Seven: Sunset.
1. Beginnings

A series of 100 honest-to-god drabbles (which means they're all 100 words exactly) that I've been working on for a while. Totally disconnected, based on a table I found over at LJ. The prompts will be posted out of order, one at a time -- _hopefully_ over a period of 100 days.

Enjoy! :D

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**1. Beginnings  
**  
He takes off his jacket when they arrive at their dorm, dumps it on the floor. The wet _clanking_ of Al putting it in the closet is aggravating. Ed has a headache. Ed has a heartache. Ed is fucking _tired_, so tired that he thinks he could sleep forever.

Twelve years old and already exhausted of living.

He falls into bed seconds later, and even though he's completely worn out, just wants to sleep the sleep of the dead forever, he can't seem to lose himself. He's tired, so tired, but this, he thinks somewhat despairingly, is only the beginning.


	2. White

**2. White**

_White._

In the rice, her dress, the clouds outside; in her bouquet, in the diamond on her finger. White thoughts, white dreams, and everything's pure when they start out. Everything's new, fresh – incredible.

Things shift to the other end of the spectrum faster than he can control.

It's black on the night he dies. Pitch. The words on the page are black. His blood is darker than he thought it would be, oozes thick and liquid onto the ebony ground. No stars, no moon.

It's only through the white-tinged silhouette that he even knows it's his wife pulling the trigger.


	3. First

**3. First******

Edward turns into Maes shortly after Alphonse gets his body back. He purchases a camera and solemnly vows to document all of his brother's milestones in his new body.

"Your first breakfast!" _Click. _He squeals as Alphonse sluggishly flops a hand into his cereal bowl.

"Your first steps!" _Click. _He claps as Alphonse falls unceremoniously out of bed on his way to the bathroom.

"Your first obscene gesture!" _Click. _He gushes as Alphonse breathlessly flips him off from across the room.

The phase doesn't last long though, because wouldn't you know it – Alphonse makes good on his first threat, too.


	4. Food

**4. Food**

His captors feed him bread. It's decent, better than some kidnapper slop he's had before, and it's rimmed with minimal amounts of mold. The problem is that there's not enough of it. A slice a day is enough to keep a normal man going, but Edward is not a normal man – he has a brother who runs on his life-force to consider.

There's an ache in his stomach when he wakes up on the fifteenth day, and despite the fear of beatings that's been pounded into his brain and his body, he sticks his hand through the bars and _begs_.


	5. Moon

**5. Moon**

A half moon lines the creases of his left hand. It expands with his power, nearly waxing to gibbous in his lust for destruction. It wanes to a crescent in his defeat, hand hung low and lax in an empty prison cell. It rises and pulls the tides of blood in battle, lowers and brings the burning, scathing, blinding sun after it.

It's a harvest moon in war, large and full, brightness attempting surpass the sun itself, and it bathes the land below it in a bloody red glow.

Finally, on a desolate battlefield in war-torn Liore, it is eclipsed.

* * *

I think that this is one of the best that I've ever written, but no one ever seems to really know who it's about and it makes me really sad. XD; I thought it was pretty obvious, and I was always proud of all the analogies I made. It's really ridiculous how long I spent on 100 words here to think of all those, actually.

...You guys know who it is, right!?


	6. Gray

**6. Gray**

He lives his life in shades of gray. It is a sin, he knows, because his omnipotent God sees the matters of men in black and white. She has outlined them in her commandments, She has painted them on the temple walls in Ishbal, and She has created a following based on a strict system of right and wrong.

Scar defends his people and beliefs, kills for his God, sees Ishballa in all that he does, all that he seeks.

Scar does so with unholy arts, perversions of nature, tactics of his heretical enemy – and he will not be saved.

* * *

Someone pointed out to me that Ishballa is a female entity when I had all those "she"s written as "he"s before. ...I think that she was right, wasn't she?


	7. Clockwork

**7. Clockwork**

Roy Mustang knows that the military runs like clockwork. He's seen the cogs turning long enough. He is, has been, will forever be one of the gears himself – this, he's come to accept. And though he knows the internal workings of the military like the whorled top of his mahogany desk, knows that it is a clean, efficient, _strong _machine – he also knows that one loose screw can be, could be, (_would be_) enough to disrupt that smooth interior.

He looks at Fullmetal over the bridge of his hands, thinks – _you're going to send it all to hell one day._


	8. Deaf

**8. Deaf**

"Fucking hell," he says shakily, and his hands are unsteady on the stair rails. "F-fucking _hell_." The muscle around his false leg is red and angry and quivering, now.

Pinako doesn't move to help him, as she can tell her granddaughter is itching to, eyes wide and wet and teeth wearing a hole in her bottom lip. She doesn't tell him to watch his language either, though. She just serenely takes a drag on her pipe at every obscenity that passes his lips.

"Fucking _shit_." He tumbles down another stair.

It's a small courtesy, but she knows it's appreciated nonetheless.


	9. Green

**9. Green**

Grass stains are a terrible pain to get out of clothes, Trisha thinks, and with two boys they're everywhere. Elbows, knees – Edward had a touch of green on a pair of his boxer shorts once, and Trisha's mind still boggles a little over how that came to be. Ink stains are worse though, and recently those have become more prominent – ink, chalk. Their clothes have stopped smelling fresh, have taken on the musty smell of their basement. She will go downstairs soon, tell them to go outside, play. It isn't healthy for boys to be spending all their time inside.


	10. Pink

**10. Pink**

His underwear is pink. It's not something he meant to do, or something he meant to bring to the attention of the staff, but there was no denying its lovely shade of rose to Havoc when he trudged into the office in ripped trousers one morning. Al isn't there to notice the gap in the seat of his pants, and thus isn't there to save Ed the awkward explanation –

"Pink, chief?"

Ed twirls stupidly like a dog chasing his tail before he realizes, turns beet red, and mumbles something about mixing colors with whites in the wash. Jean just smiles.

* * *

Oh, Ed. Washing your red coat with your white boxers? Even I, the laundry inept, know the dangers of such a thing.

By the way, for those not sure about drabble five (Moon), I was talking about Kimblee. XD The 'splodey tattoo on his left hand has a moon in the center. ...I guess it was my fault for being ridiculously obscure. ;D


	11. Sound

**11. Sound**

The noise it makes is loud enough to wake the whole compound, and Ed's jerking into consciousness and rolling from bed before he even knows what he's going to do about it. He staggers to the window just as it screams out again – a high, thin, miserable wail that echoes horribly in the military dorm courtyard. He says the dirtiest word knows when the moonlight falls on it then, just right to reveal the chimera in all its bestial glory – scaled and feathered and furred – and its pained roar sounds again just as his coat wisps quietly around the doorframe.


	12. Broken

**12. Broken**

Win,

It's not that my arm's broken – because it's not. It's just that there's some sand stuck up in the joints, the gears at the elbow don't turn quite so smoothly anymore, there's a smidgeon of rust at the wrist from washing those dishes in Rul City after I blew up their favorite restaurant last week, and the shoulder doesn't quite want to lift above my head anymore.

So. It's not that my arm's broken – because it's not.

My leg, on the other hand, could definitely use some attention.

...Feel like making a trip out to Central?

Yours truly,

Ed


	13. Diamond

Ah, forgot to update for a few days! Sorry about that! Have some totally-weird-of-me-to-write-this-pairing Ed/Win to make up for it. (But don't expect any more Ed/Win out of me. ;D)

* * *

**13. Diamond**

Edward took the time to study his automail arm sometimes – the precise curves of his hand-crafted fingers, the smooth contours of his forearm, the sloping curvature of his shoulder.

He couldn't appreciate the beauty of automail like she could – it was wonderful and elaborate and damn useful, but he'd seen so many more beautiful things.

Like diamonds. Like the blue of them, and their glinting in the light, and the sparks in their depths, and the fine shape like a fine cut, and the silent, beautiful intensity.

He looked into her eyes when she gazed at his arm.

Like diamonds.


	14. Sight

**14. Sight  
**  
The inside of Edward's coat is a tapestry, and woven into it are the tales of a thousand battles, a thousand petty scrapes that nearly took his life. The inside of Edward's coat is a patchwork quilt, stained dark with his life's blood, homage to a thousand hospital visits dyed forever into its threadbare folds. The inside of Edward's coat is a memory, a thousand memories – lives lost, times gone by, past sorrow.

The outside is clean, tailored, simple. The outside of Edward's coat is a goal, on the back lies one promise –

– and that's all that anyone can see.


	15. Sunrise

**15. Sunrise**

"S'cold," he said, and huddled closer to his brother.

"I know."

"M'head hurts."

"You shouldn't have drank so much."

"No lessons, please. Head _hurts_."

Al pushed the hair out of his brother's eyes. "Shush then."

Ed seemed to take the advice, and blessed silence reigned then, but only for a moment before –

"Sun's risin'," Ed slurred.

"So it is."

"S'not the same."

"What?"

"S'not as pretty here."

Images flashed in Al's mind's eye then, the reds and golds and oranges and purples that flushed across the skies over Rizenbul.

The world outside the window was gray and lifeless.

"Shush, Brother."


	16. King

Sorry for the long absence, everyone! My internet went down -- updates should be daily from here on out for a while. Have an attempt at humor to make up for it. :D

**

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**

**16. King**

"Put this on," he said loftily, and held up a petite strip of blue fabric.

"Of course sir," Riza responded, slinking to his desk. As she touched the miniskirt, it inexplicably appeared on her, and that was just alright with Roy because she looked fabulous in it. Offhandedly, he wondered why he'd never seen those spectacularly milky thighs before now.

"Now. Rub my back," he purred sinfully.

"Of course –" she said, but incredibly, it was Fullmetal's voice that came out of her mouth, which effectively killed the mood entirely.

" –Bastard would be asleep, lazy ass."

Roy whimpered wistfully.


	17. Parents

**Warning! - Spoiler **for a late-ish manga chapter. I remember writing this right after reading the latest Ishbal flashbacks (you remember -- those four terrible Ed-less chapters? ;D) which, in hindsight, is probably not that recent. If you don't want to be spoiled for just a teeny weeny bit of the manga, probably don't read. Also, some implied sexual content. Honestly, don't know where this one came from.

* * *

**17. Parents**

"Tell me more about my parents," she whispers into his collarbone.

He nibbles at her earlobe, pulls waves of yellow hair free, graciously complies.

"Brave people," he breathes, closes his eyes and feels her heart thrumming beneath his graceful, deadly hands. "Brave doctors."

"You tried – " she simpers, "You tried to reach them."

His tattoos hover and glow above her throbbing pulse. "Too slow."

"When you got there–?"

"Already gone."

"They–"

He gently kisses the face that smiled at him from a blood-stained photograph frame. "Beautiful girl." He savors the taste of irony on her lips. "They loved you so _much_."


	18. Air

**18. Air**

"He's alive…but – he can't seem to _breathe_ well – " Al had said, and it had been easy to focus on the "alive" bit when he'd been miles away in Central, but it was hard to ignore the horrible wheezing when he could hear it so very plainly.

"We think that he lost one of his lungs," he vaguely heard Al say, behind the heaviness of Ed's breathing.

Roy wondered what kind of a world it was where a boy like Edward Elric had to fight for every breath he took. Then he wondered why he even bothered to wonder anymore.


	19. Children

**19. Children**

Edward tries to tell himself he's not a babysitter. He's a battle-hardened war hero. He's the alchemist of the people. He's a fucking legend in five countries – but he is not a babysitter.

On Saturdays he is a jungle gym and a pony. He is a train-fixer and a one-man transmutation machine. He is a source of entertainment and a proctor of fingerpaints. He is the voices in the storybooks and the lap to lay on. He is the bountiful supplier of illegal sweets. He is the gentle kiss on the forehead at naptime.

But he is not a babysitter.

* * *

These are Al and Winry's kids by the way. ;D Or they could be Roy and Riza's. You see, in my perfect world, Ed ends up alone as the angsty, eccentric uncle -- perhaps even pining after someone who is already married. Everybody wins! (Except for Ed, but I know we all like it better when he loses.)


	20. Spirit

**20. Spirit**

There was a spirit at Roy's bedside. Roy was tired and weak, couldn't see for all the bandages that swathed his face, but he was aware of its warm presence.

_I'm cold_, he thought.

There were blankets.

_I'm hungry_, he thought.

There was food.

His dreams reminded him of Hughes, and he said so sometimes – called his name. He was shushed, and more hospital slop was coaxed down his throat.

When the time to take the bandages off arrived, Roy anticipated Maes' face there at his bedside, but the final layer dropped, and it was only Riza, smiling at him.

* * *

Poor Roy. Poor Riza. TT


	21. Smell

**21. Smell**

Oil. It's grimy and stinky and all-around unpleasant, and when he touches his brother for the first time after his restoration, he has to ask him to step away. Edward looks hurt and horrified when he does, but he does – he'd always do just as Al asked, always – and Al doesn't know how to explain that scents are overwhelming, that he's sensitive, that he can smell bread baking a mile away, that the oily, metallic musk is vomit-inducing, at best. Ed shuffles his feet from across the room, and Al struggles to think of a reason before the tears start.


	22. Water

Two drabbles for this prompt because I wrote one, forgot about it, and wrote another one. I like both, so here they are. :D

* * *

**22. Water**

It's dangerous enough that he really doesn't like to brave the shallow end, anymore. Al urges him in on hot days – his automail sears so badly sometimes he swears he can hear his skin _sizzling _– but his imagination is overactive and always has been, and just as he saw his mother risen from the dead and waiting with open arms, he sees himself struggling against a liquid with no purchase, sinking and drowning and watching his life bubble up to the shimmering surface.

Once was enough, so he waves Al off and settles down on the banks with a book.

**--**

He can't swim anymore, and it makes Al worry, worry, worry anytime they travel near water. Ed can't say he blames his brother – he's still afraid from just from the first time, when he'd hit a sinkhole in a lake during his automail recovery and went down, down, down. And Al can't get wet with his bloodseal to think about, can't dive in to save him like he does on land. Ed had pulled himself out somehow – to this day he's not sure how he managed it – but now he knows better than to go anywhere his brother can't follow.

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Almost 100 reviews! Thanks for all the support, guys!


	23. Choices

**23. Choices  
**  
Great puffs of foggy breath, blood on teeth and teeth so white, hair a matted bramble, whiskers flicking, tail twitching, automail arm hovering over its thrumming, anxious gullet.

Waiting. Silence. A final desperate standoff, because one word –

A wild animal howl.

A sigh of relief – a moment too soon.

"Fu – " it says.

"Fuck," Ed finishes.

He lowers the blade, and thumps it on the head instead. One word, and maybe this was a child, a father or a mother, and Ed had to try.

"Deconstruction," Ed murmurs one word, claps, and this isn't going to be pretty at all.

* * *

Ah, that one is strange, but I really like it for some reason. :D


	24. Fire

**24. Fire**

He smelled smoke and he wasted no time in climbing on a train. There was no fire blazing on the horizon as he looked out the window that night. Mainly, it was his reflection glaring back at him. He looked tired and old, he felt tired and old, but he smelled smoke, so here he was.

He didn't see the dying embers of what had been a blazing inferno until he got to Central, saw the investigators bustling about the scene and the dried blood leaking from the phonebooth's door.

It wasn't until then that the smoke stung his eyes.

* * *

Hughes. T.T

Also -- if you're at all familiar with my other works, I would really appreciate it if you filled out the poll on my profile. :D I have too many projects going on, and I'm trying to work on all of them at once. I'd love to see what the readers really want to read so that I can prioritize properly. Thanks!


	25. Blind

**25. Blind**

Ed is not superficial, but he's not _blind_ either. He sees beauty in nature and in people.

He sees no real beauty in himself, however. Maybe once, he supposes, he had the potential to grow into something attractive, but years of sin have turned him ugly. Now, he is scarred. His reflection is skewed by the things he has done and the people he has wronged, and Edward Elric is the ugliest person in the world.

He knows this, he accepts this. But he still looks into the mirror some days and thinks _you're too young to look this old._

* * *

If only Ed could realize what a sexy, sexy hunk of man flesh he really is.

Just another reminder -- if you're at all familiar with my other works, I would really appreciate it if you filled out the poll on my profile. :D I have too many projects going on, and I'm trying to work on all of them at once. I'd love to see what the readers really want to read so that I can prioritize properly. Thanks!


	26. Queen

**26. Queen**

King Roy Mustang had a full deck of cards at his disposal. His men, his treasured subordinates, were his jacks and his aces. And they may not have been the most useful cards in his deck, but he couldn't very well have a royal flush without them.

He had thousands of numbered militia men at his beck and call, and he utilized them, made use of numbers two through ten for whatever his new hand necessitated.

A little boy and his brother made for a pair of excellent jokers –

and Riza Hawkeye made for an excellent queen of hearts.


	27. Breakfast

**27. Breakfast**

Roy serves Al breakfast in bed on the morning after his restoration – raspberries. He feels almost dirty seeing the expression of rapture that is so clearly meant for Ed, the gentle sweep of the tongue across his lips, the red-stained human teeth when he smiles ever-so-gently. Al is nearly shaking with the intensity of flavor though, and he has to shove the bowl away before he's even finished.

Roy pops a raspberry into his mouth when he's sure Al is done.

"How is he?" Al asks, voice hoarse.

"...Better," Roy responds, hesitant.

The raspberry turns to ash in his mouth.

* * *

Iunno why I chose raspberries. They have a really powerful flavor and they'd probably be way too super strong for him. Plus there's the seeds and the fact that if you ever get a sour one, it kills you a little on the inside. I bet I was eating some at the time. XD;

...Ha. I talked about raspberries instead of how I made Ed suffer again. X3


	28. Lunch

**28. Lunch**

Edward Elric – full-time trouble-maker and smart-alec extraordinaire – returns from lunch sporting a shiner that's beginning to force his eye closed, that looks startlingly black against the gold of his irises. Miss Plum blows a hair out of her eye and works up the courage to call him over, because that certainly hadn't been there _before_ lunch, and his mother really does have enough to worry about, the poor dear.

Alphonse approaches her before she has the chance to, though, his hands wringing. He points meekly to a boy across the room.

"Don't tell Ed I tattled."

Miss Plum pinky swears.

* * *

I have a love/hate relationship with this particular drabble. I love the subject matter and time period, but I remember that when I was writing it, I went way, way, way over my word limit. It seems incomplete to me now that I've cut it down so much. But it's still adorable when Al says 'tattle,' isn't it? ;D


	29. Dinner

**29. Dinner**

For his last meal, Edward goes all out. Money isn't really an object when you're about to die, so he comes home with thousands of cenz worth of ingredients.

"Al – could you make stew?"

Al scrutinizes each item carefully. "This must have cost you a fortune, Brother."

He deserves some stew, doesn't he? If he gives himself for his brother, if he kills himself to make things right, if he gives up grass, flowers, trees, birds – can't he have this?

"Don't worry about it."

And if he starts crying halfway through the meal – the stew had too many onions, anyway.

* * *

T.T!


	30. Missing

**30. Missing**

He doesn't care for Roy's Sunday visits, but he tolerates them. It's isolated in his room after all, and he doesn't have much better to do, so he tolerates them. What he doesn't like are the questions that inevitably come when Roy steps inside.

_Where did the homunculi go?_

He doesn't know.

_What happened to your other leg?_

He doesn't know.

Roy puts on his hat as he leaves; he always knows which question to end with, and he asks as he opens the door.

_Where is your brother?_

He doesn't know, but he wishes every moment that he did.

* * *

Yeah, I dunno either.


	31. Lost

This disturbs the hell out of me, and I can't believe I even wrote it. XD I was looking through some old files the other day, and I found this lurking under the discreet number 31 somewhere in my fanfiction folder. I vaguely recall an ex-livejoural friend (I've bitched about her here before XD;;), pervert that she is, requesting necrophilia.

Well. She got necrophilia.

* * *

**31****. Lost**

She must have been beautiful in life. Hair like strands of auburn silk, and they glow in the moon as they fall across her shoulders. Roy moves above her reverently, eyes burning and heart thumping, shoulders drawn tightly tense.

She is still beautiful in death. Pale like a lunar flower, bloodless face pristine, supple skin still untouched by decay. He takes a moment to stroke her arm.

Cool. But not uncomfortably so. Perhaps, through his caress, he can make her warm again.

Maes pulls him from the room just as Roy leans down to breathe a prayer into her lips.


	32. Fixed

The sequel to drabble 12, Broken. ;D Because I figure something light would be good after that last batch of wtf-ery.

* * *

**32. Fixed  
****  
**Ed,

I'm glad I got out to Central to fix your arm. And your leg. And your head. You were right about your automail – it wasn't _broken _by any definition of the word. After all, I only had to spend three days sorting through the wires, sanding off the rust, cleaning the nerve connections, tightening the screws, blasting the joints, oiling the gears, and rearranging the plates.

Naw, it wasn't broken. Too bad about your head, though. Really, I think it was better off after the wrench hit it. Don't you?

Say hi to Al for me.

Love always,

Winry


	33. Paralysis

**33. Paralysis**

There is a pie sitting on the windowsill. Cherry, if Ed smells correctly. And of course it would be – mid-July, the pie cherries must be coming on in the orchards.

Ed turns back to his book, snuggles deeper into his down blanket. Best to ignore it. Best to ignore – he sniffs again. They've put cinnamon in it.

Ed _loves _cinnamon.

He sneaks a peak around the corner to look. Goddamn pie, sitting innocently, cooling in the open air, beckoning with steamy tendrils, begging to be eaten.

Ed glares down at his sullen stump of a leg and _curses_ the Gate.

* * *

Ed should feel lucky that he can't move. I've been picking those godforsaken pie cherries from my trees for the last two weeks. XP Stupid pie cherries.

It only occured to me like a day after I wrote this drabble that I could've written it about Havoc with a prompt like this. XD OH WELL. That, clearly, would've been too easy.


	34. Heart

Posted in response to reviewers of the last prompt who say Havoc gets no love from me. He does! I just haven't posted the Havoc drabbles yet! X3 But here is one now!

This was written a while back, and I didn't even go back to check my sources so it might be (probably is) grossly inaccurate. Just an idea -- if Jean had actually had genuine feelings for Lust that probably would've complicated things tenfold for poor Jean. Not that things aren't complicated enough already. Oh, the inner turmoil!

**

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34. Heart**

She didn't stab him through the heart, but she might as well have. It seems inconsequential to everyone else – that he had dated this girl before she paralyzed him from the waist down – but to him it's a very real, rock-solid thing in his chest as he lies immobile in the hospital bed.

There is Havoc, whose emotions are so fickle that he's forgotten his love for her like he's forgotten how his toes feel.

There is poor, sad, desperate Havoc who can't help but love Solaris still.

He hates her. He loves her. He hates himself.

He hates himself.


	35. Light

**35. Light**

"You can't keep that up forever, y'know –"

"Shut up, Fullmetal."

"I'm just sayin', fire needs oxygen, and s'much as we need t'see, I think we need t'_breathe _more."

"I'm well aware what fire needs. I've only devoted most of my life to studying it."

"I'm just _sayin'_. When I start to get light-headed, I'm gonna faint right on you."

"Don't worry, the environment is much more oxygen-rich closer to the ground."

"...Did you –!?"

"I'm only _saying_, Fullmetal."

"Fuck you, Mustang. Now put the light out. I feel light-headed."

"Edward."

"Mustang."

__

Sigh.

Pft-sss.

"Thanks."

"Anytime."

"...Mustang?"

"What, Fullmetal?"

"Now what?"

_Sigh._

* * *

Though a 100 word limit doesn't allow for back story, I like to imagine what led up to this one. XD I'm thinking Ed did something stupid to bring a building down on them, and now they're trapped in a little bitty enclosed space underneath a metric ton of rubble. Where Ed is left to endlessly annoy Roy and vice versa. Joy! :D


	36. Agony

**36. Agony**

Edward had a certain way of drawing his lips back and just _grimacing_ when he hurt. Somehow, it was worse than a scream could ever be, because there came with that ghastly expression the knowledge that he hurt so_ badly_, yet he still didn't want anyone to know about it.

He comes in for an assignment wearing that expression one day, eyebrows furrowed ominously and face taut with quiet pain.

"Orders, sir?" The grinding of his teeth is audible.

_Yes. Fuck. Tell me what's wrong, already. Tell me where you're hurting, I'll make it go away._

"No, Fullmetal. You're dismissed."

* * *

Yum. :D


	37. He

**37. He**

Roy's father had been a respected general. He hadn't been around much – it was his mother who had done most of the child-rearing in the family, but that wasn't unusual. Regardless, he couldn't imagine a household where he didn't have a paternal figure to go to, where there was no strong masculine backbone to support things. He had looked to his father for things his mother couldn't give him, and that presence, no matter how minute it was, had been important.

Edward had never had that, and Roy wondered if maybe he hadn't either, he might have been as strong.


	38. Drink

**38. Drink**

"Can I offer you something to drink, Fullmetal? Coffee, tea, water?"

Fullmetal. Twelve-years-old and squirming restlessly on the couch.

"I…"

"Feel free to ask for anything in this office."

"Do you have any root beer?" He blurted boyishly, then bit his lip as if he regretted it. "I mean not that I drink that stuff, s'for kids anyways, but I've only ever had it on my birthday and – "

Roy swallowed a lump in his throat that scored holes in his esophagus as it went down, because it was one thing to _be_ twelve, but to _act_ twelve –

"Of course."


	39. Passing

**39. Passing**

It's just a passing fancy, or so they tell him. It's just a fleeting thing. Soon, they say, he'll find a good girl to settle down with, pull his head out of the clouds, maybe get himself a respectable position in the army.

But their soon is not soon enough for Alfons. Because that day may be destined to come, but certainly not in his lifetime. Life is nothing but a passing fancy to him – just a fleeting thing. And Alfons finds that keeping his head in the clouds is the only thing that makes his fleeting life worth living.


	40. Joker

**40. Joker**

When Ed unwittingly walked into a rather heated discussion involving bawdy magazines and more skin than any fourteen-year-old should be familiar with, neither Havoc nor Breda quite knew what to do.

Ed blinked at them when they began stammering, red-faced, about "birds and bees" and "when a man reaches a certain age…", waiting silently until their halting explanations stuttered to an unsteady and awkward stop. Breda cleared his throat so loudly then, he didn't hear when Edward spoke next.

"What?"

"I said, s'that last month's issue?"

"…Um…yeah?"

"Oh. I've already got that one."

Havoc's cigarette fell out of his mouth.

* * *

Of course Ed reads porn. Ed needs something to get him through the day -- he hasn't go much else going for him.

...Besides, he's probably one of the only men in the world that actually reads the articles in those magazines. X3


	41. Enemies

**41. Enemies**

Roy can't help notice that Edward Elric is his own worst enemy. He is aware that the same had once been said about himself, and he marvels at that every time he sees Ed take hits, skip meals or maintenance or sleep, to help his little brother.

He wonders if he had been that mindlessly self-destructive. Worse yet, he wonders if all the people he cares for had once had to _watch him _be that mindlessly self-destructive. It's horrible and terrifying and he wouldn't wish it on anyone – but he thinks he understands Hughes and Hawkeye a little better now.


	42. Hours

**42. Hours**

When you don't sleep, the concept of Days and Weeks and Months start to lose their meaning. After a while, there are only Hours. It hurts less that way, because there are always enough hours in a day when it is only one long, endless thing – enough hours to report to Mustang, pretend to smile, stop terrorists, end a corrupt political regime, eliminate homunculi, fight, fight, fight, breathe and, he hopes, eventually, find the Philosopher's Stone. So long as he doesn't sleep, so long as today is still the day that all this began, there is hope.

So he doesn't.

* * *

Sounds a bit like me, minus the whole finding Philosopher's Stone thing.

I figure that Ed's got the right idea -- there'll be plenty of time for sleeping when I'm dead, after all.


	43. Family

**43. Family**

He cries when Al gets married. Not trickling little sniffles of silent happiness, but full-on, miserable, short-breathed, stuffed-nose _wails_. He locks himself away in some back room during the reception and does everything to stop it, but the tears come and come and come.

Their apartment is strangely empty of things without Al there, and tonight he'll have to return to it.

His life is strangely empty of meaning without Al there, and tonight he'll have to start living it.

Roy comes to find him about an hour after the tears started, gazes at his red-splotched face, and says nothing.

* * *

Don't much care for this one. I'm...really not sure about the ending. I think Roy being there was meant to have some significance when I wrote the drabble, but I can't for the life of me see it now.


	44. Death

I think that when I wrote this one I had The Theory of Immortality in mind -- I guess you'll know it as three those chapters in Shattered (Innocent, Drowning, Immortality) where Ed's in jail and Mustang's dead if you know it at all. X3 It will always be one of my favorites even though it is in desperate need of some serious editing -- i.e. someday I will go take out all my horrific Japanese honorifics, yes I will. God, those are mighty painful to read now that I am not fifteen.

* * *

**44. Death**

_I'll come back for you._

He fights the cord around his neck with the desperation of the dying man he is, knows that it can't end like this because _fucking hell_ – he made a promise. He made a promise to a boy defending himself against impossible odds, he made a promise to a boy sitting in a dank military jail cell, he made a promise to the boy's little brother, and _it cannot end like this_.

His vision spots with white and inside him, he feels something burst.

_I will not die here._

The second lie he tells that day.


	45. Disease

**45. Disease**

He's sick and he's well aware of it. By the time he turns twenty-five, it's getting extremely hard to ignore. Al catches him coughing sometimes, and even Mustang can't help but notice when he comes in looking flushed.

He's sick and he's well aware of it – this is how he'll die, and he's known it since he was twelve years old and prostrate at the Gate's doors.

He also knows that he has a few miserable years left, yet.

A gift, a curse. He's well aware.

The only thing left to wonder is what they will bury him in.

* * *

I wrote this a while back, but recently this drabble has had even more truth to it. I've been rewatching the series with some friends of mine, and I just got to the bit where it explains Ed's encounter with the gate. It's astounding how much he should really have known about his life before it actually happens -- he saw Rose and Klaus and a number of people he encountered later. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew exactly how and how he was going die and how much would that _suck_? Seriously. X.x


	46. Red

**46. Red**

The red wine leaves a stain on his carpet that doesn't fade. It's worse than blood that way, because it stays that gleaming, horrible red instead of fading to a less threatening sort of rust.

There's dark mark waiting serenely at the foot of the stairs when he wakes up, and through the haze of a hangover, Roy has a enough lucidity to remember spilling it there when the phone call came.

_– he's in the hospital, but we're not sure..._

_Roy._

_It's okay._

_Roy?_

_Just a little fight._

_He'll be okay._

He still has a bitter taste in his mouth.


	47. Triangle

**47. Triangle**

They say it takes a madman to draw a perfect circle (mind, he can do that too), but if that's the case, it must take a genius to draw a perfect triangle.

Alphonse can gauge the angles mentally, can use his hand as portable leather protractor, can draw a right triangle, rotated forty-five degrees and inverted with his eyes closed and his hands behind his back.

Alphonse is a talent. Alphonse is a great alchemist.

Alphonse will never live up to the legend his brother has created simply by clapping his hands, and he draws his arrays and accepts that.

* * *

Animeverse, because it always made me mad that Al could suddenly do alchemy without a circle in the manga. XD;; It brings to mind Ed's little mental picture of the scales suddenly tipping in Al's favor -- I just kept thinking no fair, that's Ed's deal!

...And then I kept reading the manga anyway because it is amazing and I am Arakawa's bitch, yes I am. T.T


	48. Lightning

**48. Lightning**

He was a man in blue with shining medals on his chest, and he walked like one not long for this world – staggering blindly, drunkenly; shaggy, matted mop of black sagging in his eyes; blood running in thin streams down the coarse planes of his hard-set jaw.

He struck quickly, precisely, and in a wave of his hand a city block bellowed ash and flame and smoke. In a snap of his fingers, fast as lightning and just as beautiful, the world exploded in red, orange, yellow hues.

And then, dropping his hand to his side, he slowly plodded on.

* * *

Ah, I have a response to an anonymous reviewer, **nik**, who left a pretty brutal review in response to a comment I made on my last chapter.

Listen, I don't think I deserved quite the stern talking to or "excessive quotation marks" you gave in your review. I understand the manga quite well, thanks, and I understand Arakawa's reasoning very well, too. That will not change the fact that there are certain things about the story that I don't like. Certain directions that the story goes when I would prefer they head another way. I accept Arakawa's decisions and I love her characters and plotlines to death, but that doesn't mean I have to swallow everything she feeds me. Yeah, I do tend to side with Ed because he is my favorite character, and as a fan I have a direction in my head that I would like to see him go. I do not, for instance, like Ed/Winry. I do not like that Ed/Winry is happening more and more in the story. It is an opinion that I am allowed to have. This is _fan_fiction, which probably means that every author on this site wants to change something about the series as it is. I don't appreciate having my knowledge of a series that I have spent a lot of time in impugned for a simple statement of opinion.

If you guys would rather I kept my opinion to myself from now on, you really need only say so.


	49. Days

**49. Days**

The hurt doesn't go away in days, and he had known it wouldn't. So, he waits patiently under the intensity of their lights, lets them tinker around inside and outside and then settle him down to sleep like a broken doll.

The hurt doesn't go away in months, and he had known it wouldn't. So, he does his exercises, takes his first steps for the second time, proudly lifts an apple to his lips without crushing it.

The hurt doesn't go away in years, and he had known that, too – but he wishes with all his heart that it _would_.

* * *

Ah, almost halfway through! Thanks for all the support thus far, guys!

And sorry for the couple of days I missed in there -- things are getting crazy and erratic around my house, because I am leaving to move to college on Sunday. It's insane trying to squeeze in all my moving and packing and buying stuff while trying to be with my friends -- I had a sort of last hoorah sleepover on Saturday night/Sunday morning during which me and a few friends stayed up _all _night to finish the FMA series and movie (reference to 'Hours' here, really), thus the reason for my lack of update Sunday -- i.e. sleep.

Anyway, this is getting too long than I'm entitled to for a 100 word drabble, but just know that updates will be weird from here on out for about 2 weeks. Starting Sunday, probably no updates at all for a while. Thanks for your patience. :D


	50. Middles

**50. Middles**

It's days like this, stuck in the tedium of some meeting or another, that Ed can't help but think his middle won't end. He began the story with his stupidity and started the rising action with his step into the military – but his life story has no climax, and the conflicts just keep coming, and there's absolutely no resolution in sight.

The story of Edward Elric, he thinks, is a long one – sometimes tedious and sometimes sad, and sometimes lonely and painful – and someone needs to write the goddamn ending, already, because this hopelessly endless middle is driving him insane.

* * *

For those of you who aren't aware, it was recently **confirmed** (though there have been many torturously teasing rumors floating around for quite some time prior to this...) on the Anime News Network that work is going to start on a **new Fullmetal Alchemist television series **soon. :D Supposedly, it's going to be entirely manga-based. (Can you say animated Ling, wut!?) But that's not quite confirmed yet, so don't quote me on it.

...I may or may not have done several major happy dances around my computer when I found out. Several loud 'eee' noises may or may not have left my mouth. I can't be sure, really. ;D

Also -- halfway there! Yay!


	51. Birthday

**51. Birthday**

The red stones are delicious even if the world it too bright and the light is like a tangible _hurting _thing on her not-skin. She's not sure where she's taking them in, not sure that she's a _she _either, for that matter, but things are making more sense and the stones are delicious and this woman will take her somewhere dark, she's sure. Somewhere where the light doesn't pound against her quite so mercilessly.

"What's this one called?" Something says, and she feels mild impact _somewhere_, like something has tapped her_._

Trisha, she thinks, uncertain. Mother.

"Sloth."

It's good enough.

* * *

Not my favorite. Vaguely confusing to read looking back on it, but I think I meant it to be when I first wrote it. A number of sentences can be interpreted a few ways, but I guess that makes it more fun. X3;


	52. Colorless

**52. Colorless**

The air is meant to be colorless, but Roy can see it. The turbulence of it, swirling vortexes, the ebbs and flows and eddies over and around the trees outside. Soft and gentle in his office, and he sees a swirling swish of it with the opening of every door, the slam of every file drawer. There are pockets that he could manipulate. And there has potential to be more than it is, more than they see, something beautiful and powerful and dangerous.

The air is meant to be colorless, but Roy can see it.

And it's always, always red.

* * *

So...I'm at college and I guess I'm as settled as I'll ever be. It's been a pretty turbulent week and I'm still not quite sure how I feel about the whole thing, so if updates still aren't regular for a while, then it's just because I'm feeling a little out of whack. If you're still there, thanks for sticking with me.


	53. Too Much

**53. ****Too Much**

He stood at the door, wearing that tired, smoky smile. Tired because his eyes were drooping, his stance was swaggering, his automail was hanging lax and heavy on his shoulder. Smoky because Roy couldn't seem to see through it. Into it. Around it.

Roy, never the optimist that those around him seemed to be, did not smile back. He merely stood, led Fullmetal to the couch by the bookcase, patted him once on the head.

The boy just smiled, shivered, and said, "I can't believe we're still alive," before he simply collapsed into Roy and cried and cried and cried.

* * *

Classes start...today, I guess. 8/;;; I'm starting to feel like Ed here, really.


	54. Winter

**54. Winter  
****  
**Alphonse plodded along in front of him, going as slow as he could and very pointedly _not offering help_ as Edward limped along behind him. Layers of cloth, scarves and coats and mittens, testified the fact that simple trips across Rizenbul in the snow were becoming too difficult for Edward's automail joints since he turned thirty, and winter walks to Winry's were nearly impossible. They would tell their friend that living in their tiny, winter-bound town had become something of a misery, _really_, but they would wait until after Christmas, because they had to make their last at home count.

* * *

Does Christmas exist in Amestris? Probably not. Do I care? No sir. ;D


	55. She

**55. She  
****  
**Edward, quite out of the blue, found himself slapped in the face as he was walking down the street one day. The woman who did the slapping was pretty – award-winning sweetheart smile, shapely figure, well-endowed.

Alphonse was pleased, relieved almost out of his mind when he heard the allegations –

" – Staring at my _chest_!" She shouted. Had he been able to, Alphonse would have fainted then and there.

It wasn't until she was storming off down the street and Edward shouted a desperate, "I just wanted to know the composition of your shirt!" after her that Alphonse understood, and promptly deflated.

* * *

Alright! Time to get back on track! I have no excuse for not updating really aside from the fact that college is kicking my ass in every way imaginable. I don't have the motivation to do much of anything because I just feel _gross_ most of the time. Depressed and sleepy and mopey and hot and uncomfortable. But! Reviews every day brightened my day during the summer, so I'm going to use that as motivation to get my butt in gear. Expect and encourage regular updates from now on. :D


	56. Fall

**56. Fall**

A bullet rips through him and Ed goes down.

Dirt, mouth, blood.

"Fullmetal Alchemist, eliminated by a single bullet –"

Breathe in, out, in, onetwothree, onetwothree, onetwoth –

Blood on the dirt. Face on the ground…?

"The headlines will be fantastic, absolutely fantastic."

Blood in his mouth, blood on the ground, foot on his back (_holyfuckholyfuckholyfuck_), face in the _dirt_.

Scrape, clang.

"Brother!"

Bam.

Man on his back, face in the dirt, blood in his mouth, blood in his lungs.

Al.

"Al –"

"Brother!"

Face in the air, man down below.

Clouds in the sky.

"Hold on, Ed!"

Scrape, clang, black.

* * *

This one is weird, weird, weird. There's something about it that I like, though.

Thanks to all my reviewers for your support. :D


	57. Sunset

**57. Sunset**

The sun goes down and he can hear his people groaning. The temporary cease fire had seemed like a good idea before the dust had settled, but now the fading light shines on a hundred thousand people writhing in pain, a hundred thousand more pale hands rising from the rubble, hideous ghostly testaments to the events of the day. The sun goes down and his face burns, the fresh silvery-white band around his new arm tingles, and he is utterly alone.

Sunsets in Ishbal had once been beautiful, reds and purples and yellows over desert sands.

They are not now.

* * *

Guhhh I suck at this updating thing. D: Also, I suck because I overuse this format like whoa. Also, I suck because I am still working on a paper that is due at 5:00 pm today (It is 5:00 in the morning...hey, I've still got 12 hours left! :D). Also, I suck because this paper is not very good. Also, I suck because I just started four sentences with also. -is shot-


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